The Scary Truth About Sex Offender 'Rehabilitation' Programs

A sign at the limits of
Wapello, Iowa. Sex offender-free districts appeared as a result
of Megan's Law.Wikimedia
Commons

Sex offender treatment programs — in which offenders follow a
syllabus aimed at "normalizing" their sexual impulses and
fantasies — have not been shown to affect the likelihood that sex
offenders will change their behavior after they get out of jail,
forensic psychiatrist David K. Ho argued this week in the
BMJ
medical journal.

The treatment centers around
discussions focusing on triggers, thinking
styles, impact on victims, emotional management, and intimacy
skills. In the UK, sex offenders who complete 86 treatment
sessions are eligible for early release from prison.

But the majority of offenders released back into society still
pose the same level of risk as they did before the treatment
program, according to research cited by Ho.

Ho, it bears noting,
has previously advocated— based on on anecdotal
evidence — for the pharmacological treatment of sex offenders,
and his BMJ editorial dismissed
the current therapy-based programs out of hand.

"Sex offenders are sent to prison, undergo
this treatment programme, are deemed to have been somewhat
rehabilitated, and are released to the public," Ho
wrote. "However,
they are as likely to offend as before receiving
treatment."

In 2012, a major review of sex
offender treatment programs concluded that for a regimen that has
been imposed on so many prisoners, there had not been nearly
enough research proving its worth. No one has done studies
rigorous enough to prove that it's useless either, though — and
that lack of data is a real problem. "Not only could this result
in the continued use of ineffective (and potentially harmful)
interventions, but it also means that society is lured into a
false sense of security in the belief that once the individual
has been treated, their risk of reoffending is reduced," the
authors wrote. "Current
available evidence does not support this belief."

While Ho's article addresses
sex offender programs in the UK, activists in the US —
particularly the American Psychiatric Association — have also
advocated for more effective treatment of sex offenders before
they are released back into society.

Currently, the Adam
Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act allows the federal
Bureau of Prisons to keep sex offenders in prison past their
release date if it appears that they’ll have “serious difficulty
in refraining from sexually violent conduct or child molestation
if released,” according to the
New Yorker. But this prolonged internment often amounts to a
form of preventative detention in which prison psychologists, and
not unaffiliated mental health professionals, decide to confine
offenders "without a reasonable prospect of beneficial
treatment of the underlying disorder," the American Psychiatric
Association has stated.

Sex offenders who receive
outpatient treatment are less likely to repeat offend than those
who don't receive this treatment, but the efficacy of sex
offenders' treatment while in prison is questionable at best.
"Treatment varies widely — most programs combine cognitive
behavioral therapy with lessons about empathy and anger
management — and, in most cases, never ends," writes Rachel Aviv
in the
New Yorker.

But many offenders are still
released to the public without the kind of post-release
supervision that would help them find housing and a job. Paul
Heroux, a criminologist and Massachusetts
State Representative,argues that
with so much focus on treatment and rehabilitation, people often
overlook basic needs like housing and a job, which are
desperately needed to help sex offenders (and all offenders)
remain crime-free after their release.